At Wednesday’s Chicago City Council meeting, Ald. David Moore (17th Ward) introduced a new ordinance on acoustic gunshot technology. Although the ordinance doesn’t mention ShotSpotter by name, it is the basis of Moore’s decision to push it through City Council.
“My interest is keeping the citizens of Chicago and specifically the residents of 17th Ward safe,” Moore said.
However, Ald. William Hall (6th Ward) blocked Moore’s efforts by pushing it to the City Council’s rules committee, stalling it for now.
Hall told reporters that Moore’s ordinance was a “passive-aggressive political move” to keep Mayor Brandon Johnson out of the decision-making process around ShotSpotter.
“We’re better than that. The people of Chicago need due process, and you don’t do it in the ninth hour,” Hall said.
Moore’s ordinance is the latest attempt by some City Council members who want the city to keep its $49 million contract with ShotSpotter, opposing Johnson’s decision to end it.
Moore and his allies including, alders Anthony Beale (9th Ward), Raymond Lopez (15th Ward) and Silvana Taberes (23rd Ward), felt Johnson’s move in February to end the contract excluded input from alders and city residents in their wards who believe the gunshot detection technology “saves lives” and want to keep it in their communities.
“At the end of the day, I think that our mayor needs to be at the table and should be leading alongside our [police] superintendent. This ordinance omits him in the process,” Hall added.
“I don’t disagree with the fact that we need safety in our city to improve. I think that repeat offenders and guns need to be off the street ASAP. But in the meantime, negotiating a contract without the head of our city at the table is dangerous,” Hall said.
At publishing time, Moore’s ordinance isn’t available to view on the City Clerk’s website.
The TRiiBE obtained a copy of the ordinance from Moore, which calls for the Chicago Police Department (CPD) Superintendent to consult with the Corporation Counsel to form a new contract extension renewal or a new contract for acoustic gunshot technology. The contract would be for a term of no less than two years and ensure no interruption to acoustic gunshot detection services.
“It’s just asking the Corporation Counsel, in consultation with CPD, to negotiate a new contract for ShotSpotter,” Moore told reporters following Wednesday’s City Council meeting.
“We know where the mayor stands on this,” Moore said, referring to ShotSpotter. “He’s already been clear about his position.”
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“The mayor has clearly said he’s against ShotSpotter. That’s just one person. It shouldn’t be a unilateral decision. I’ve always said that. It should be the voices of the community represented by the City Council,” Moore said.
Moore said he has the support of 26 alders to pass his ordinance, but it is stalled in the rules committee for now.
“ShotSpotter has been canceled. It’s been canceled,” Johnson said during a post-council press conference on Wednesday. “Our effort should be to make sure we’re building a better, stronger and safer Chicago. Our country had a decision, a generation ago, War on Drugs or War on Poverty? We know the pathway they took, and so from the Crime Bill on back. Mass incarceration has been the addiction of this country in our society. And so, the focus should be, quite frankly, on the investments we’re making.”
Last week, Johnson joined Gov. JB Pritzker, and business and philanthropic leaders, to announce that $100 million in funding had been raised for violence prevention in the city of Chicago.
This funding supports a plan known as the Scaling Community Violence Intervention for a Safer Chicago, or SC2. SC2 is a $400 million initiative to expand community violence intervention programs over the next decade. The goal is to reduce shootings and homicides by half within five years and by 75% within a decade.
This year, the initiative will focus its efforts in North Lawndale, Austin, Garfield Park, Humboldt Park, and Little Village.
